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Airpush Review - Where is the Promised CPM?

Hi all! How are you doing? Pretty tensed episode here on Airpush, and my opinion to the fact that they aren't playing fair to their developers.

Are you using Airpush? If you are, how's your CPM been doing? Ever since you started?

And if you are not, and you are planning to use it, what is attracting you to it?

Big Bang

Airpush came onto the scene pretty big. Offering a unique (at that time) mobile advertising implementation, and a super high CPM. That was great really, when you started. It is not great anymore.

Just last week, one Robert from Airpush sent me an email, inviting me to use their platform. Hey, don't you check your database before sending out the invitation emails? I am already a developer with your platform. I rechecked my old emails, and I have received email from this Robert sometime last year, but he NEVER responded to any replies or queries. Way to go!

Angry Bird

What really pissed me off was, in the email, it was written that we could achieve a CPM of $6 - $15! Are you <nasty word> kidding me? I have hardly even gotten 50% of the lower end during the better days! These days it is at around $1.5 - $1.6 range. I am making even more from my banner ads than I am from Airpush!

There is something totally wrong with Airpush. They hook new developers with very good CPM when they start, slowly dwindling down. I have Leadbolt notification ads in my apps too, but Leadbolt's revenue has been growing continuously.

Questions

So many questions need answering:

1 - My installs are growing every day, yet my pushes from Airpush is stuck around 10,000 range. Why?
2 - Why does my revenue for each day fluctuate throughout the day? I would see, for example, $19 one moment. Re-check a little later, and it is down at $18?? Did some pushes get un-sent? Returned to sender?
3 - Why is my CPM going lower by the day? Yet Airpush can send a mail out to attract me with $6- $15?
4 - The "Live Chat" on the dashboard has been stuck at "Offline" since ever!
5 - Today's average CPM $6.51??? That's been stuck there since forever too!
6 - Airpush is known to send out ads that auto download apps into user's phone. Not cool really.

No Answers

There are surely more issues with them. And I am not getting any proper answers from Airpush's people. Robert has not replied my email. Johnpaul (another Airpush fellow) told me that some problems seem to have arisen ever since Google changed the Market to Play (no, seriously?). Anyone care to explain on these?

I've checked with some other developers, and they too are having similar results. They get so excited when they start off with Airpush, but over time, it converts to Airbull.

Push yourself away

So, if you're a developer and are planning to use notification or icon ads, I strongly urge you to look elsewhere. Give Leadbolt a try. There are other options too out there, like appenda or startapp, though I have not tried them.

It would be really good for Airpush to start playing fair with their developers, we are, after all, helping them with their business, risking our apps to get 1 star ratings because of the push ads. We will pack and leave if we have no reason to stay on!

Comments

I got the same situation here. My earning drop down from ~$25/day to ~$5/day. The CPM is $0.38 for today! I go with LeadBolt in my new app. And yes, I got email from Robert too! I guess it's time to say goodbye AirPush.

Sent a note to my account manager johnpaul@airpush.com and he promptly responded with several ways to get my revenue up.

As a developer, he was correct that, I have to participate in marketing my app to continue it's growth, as well as, combat the individuals (whom I believe work for Leadbolt) that continually write duplicate bad reviews on apps that use Airpush.

Leadbolt's SDK is very easy to implement, so issues with that. You might have some location coverage issues, so if your app is specific to Afghanistan, then I guess you won't be getting good revenue. US and UK are their best sources of revenue.

I am getting CPM more than double that of Airpush, but more importantly, my pushes number is growing. In terms of revenue, I am making between 5 to 7 times more from Leadbolt than I am from Airpush.

Well, Johnpaul is probably the only person you will get a response from on Airpush, and that is nice of him. Maybe you can share what he suggested to improve revenue? As I have not received any suggestions from him.

And a major LOL on your remarks of Leadbolt people giving bad ratings to apps!

my average cpm with airpush still hovers around $3, great by any measure but it was also at 8 dollars cpm 3 weeks ago so that is concerning. As far as Anonymous 2, no kidding, marketing will bring more revenue. I personally don't spend a penny on marketing. The point of this article, which I think was brilliantly written, is that cpm's continue to fall and there is no analytic to justify it. I have never been to this site and don't use basic4android, rather use eclipse and the sdk so I don't necessarily support the blog in particular but I can assure you that if cpm's continue to fall I will abandon airpush. Until, then I will see where this goes. FYI, Airpush must be listening because my cpm has increased by nearly $1 today, lol. Let's keep this convo going people!

Yeah i use airpush, i'm uk based and my eCPM has been dropping for the last 5-6 weeks. I too have received emails from robert advertising the great eCPM of $15-36. Its a joke. All good things come to an end, or perhaps we should sign up for a new account to see if we can re-gain the hooked in eCPMs.

The only reason I could see for using airpush is if I had absolutely no respect for my users. If I didn't care that this adware would take over their phone, that it would start popping up ads on their screen even when my app were running. If my app were so lacking in reputation that I didn't care if people despised it for the advertising I infected it with. Then I'd use airpush.

But if I have an app which I spent a great deal of time producing. An app which I hope people find useful and a reputation to build then I wouldn't go near airpush for all the tea in china.

As a rule of thumb I would instantly uninstall any app which I find to include airpush and downrank it accordingly. It's not like apps are in short supply.

Hello to all.My eCPM and couple of my friends was at beginning high. And noone of us has started to use Airpush at the same time, with 1-3 months diff.For example,my ecpm was in first month >6$ ecpm, then it drops to >4$, then to 3$, and now is 2$ ecpm.

So, for me it looks like they gave you at beginning higher ecpm and then every day they take you down.For example, leadbolt pays me exactly 3x more on less applications.

I started to using apps on my applications before 1 month (didnt use em before). ATM I'm using Airpush and Leadbolt in same time on my apps, and i can say that Airpush CPM for me droped from 6,5 (at begining)to 1,6 (y-day) and it looks to me, as more pushes i get over each day, earning stays same (because CPM drops). I'm considering to remove Airpush totaly from all my apps, cause from Leadbolt I earn 5x - 6x more then from Airpush.

No Offense, Bill, but on your advice I started an ad notification campaign with my existing leadbolt account and I'm not getting the same results as you. First of all, you only get paid per click where airpush pays you per impression and on top of that the one click I received thusfar yielded a whopping 0 dollars so basically leadbolt received ad monies and didn't even pay out anything. Good deal for them. I will let the ads ride for a little but I don't see it paying off. On the same app with airpush, I did receive only about half the pushes but I think that is more programmatic than anything. That being said, Airpush cpm's have gone to shit, pushes are down 50% from last week and I have no way of gauging revenue. Hmmm, maybe I'll give Appenda a shot!

Thanks for the clarification, I did not understand CPA, makes sense. Airpush has gone completely wonky, dashboard was broken yesterday and today the fill rate is below 30%. I think I'm taking this whole ad revenue thing to seriously. My apps only generate 100k downloads per mo. I'm no angry birds, time to get back to my day job. Take Care!

Am I anon1, anon2 or anon3 now? I chatted up johnpaul@airpush.com again Friday. Between giving him (brief) access to my account and a few other marketing changes, as described in our email exchange, my eCPM is back to a respectable level.

I'm under the impression he was working with a few other devs with similar issues and concerns.

My current concern is that now that numbers are back to normal, my Airpush apps are outperforming my Leadbolt apps. Any suggestions? When will Leadbolt update their choices for app categories? They are not really applicable to most apps. Will Leadbolt make their SDK integration easier or at least similar to that of Airpush? Why is Leadbolts biweekly payment fee so high?

Well, if you're happy with Airpush, and if it is giving you whats been promised, I don't see a reason for you to leave them. Why not integrate both Leadbolt and Airpush?

But does it require every developer to allow access to JP before they start getting a more respectable eCPM? This is pretty unfair.

I did receive a communication from him too, before I even wrote this post. He was saying that he is trying to help out improve the eCPM and such.

It is not fair to other developers that he can fine tune the eCPM of certain developers of his choice. This should be a system wide setting.

As for Leadbolt, I don't work for them, but their categories have been good enough for me so far (what categories are missing?), SDK integration is one of the easiest (remember their SDK does more than just push and icon ads).

As for biweekly payments, yes I agree the fees are a little too high. I'd love to see that reduced.

I thought it's only for me. i have the exact problem like you. also in some days im getting very low fill rates like 7-8%. it seems this is some kind of a scam because i have lots of problem with them. im already using leadbolt, it's the best. i filed a ticket and they said they are investigating the issue.

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